Each year doctors learn more about diseases, their causes and their cure. When your parents were children, scarlet fever was a serious sickness for a child to have and its cause was unknown. Today, the bacteria that cause it are known and a few pills will generally cure it. The same could be said about a great number of other diseases. However, there is still much to learn about medicine and acne is one of the conditions which con­tinues to challenge us even though more is known about it than ever before.

We usually think of a disease as being due to one cause. For example, it is general knowledge that mumps is due to a virus infection. In acne there is no such single cause. Rather there are several different factors at work, all of which combined produce the eruption which we call acne. Now let us see what is known about the cause of acne today.

Puberty was a point in your life which marked the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence. It occurred when you were between the ages of twelve and fourteen. At this time a change occurred in the activity and function of your sexual glands. As a result, during the years that have followed, your body has gradually assumed a more mature appearance. These changes will continue slowly until you have reached adulthood. Dur­ing this period of growth in boys the prospect of a first shave appears near. The voice cannot make up its mind whether it is soprano or a manly baritone and hair ap­pears on the body. In girls a monthly period of men­struation starts and the old dresses, which were straight up and down, no longer fit because of the widening of the hips and the development of the breasts.

Every part of the body in some way feels the influ­ence of this glandular activity and the oil glands of the skin are no exception. To judge from the way they fever­ishly start manufacturing and pumping oil, it would seem as though they were trying to make up for then-years of sluggishness! There is nothing the body can do with this large amount of oil except carry it to the sur­face of the skin. This produces the oily appearance so typical of acne. It has already been explained that ex­cessive oil-gland activity plays an important part in the formation of acne lesions.

Medical science is trying to find out just what it is about the function of the sexual glands that causes this surge of oil. So far, there is not too much that is certain. We do know that it has something to do with the bal­ance between the different hormones that the sex glands produce in the body. This in turn is related to the func­tion of all the other glands in the body which produce hormones. All these glands are interdependent upon each other for the normal function and growth of the body. One cannot work without the other. When one is tem­porarily acting strangely, all the others may be affected. Medical knowledge is progressing rapidly and some day we will know the solution to this mystery.

There are other activities going on in the body which affect your acne. The way your tissues, including the skin, grow and maintain their health depends upon a complex series of reactions within the body. These vital reactions are called the metabolism of the body. The food you eat plays an important role in these reactions.

Over the years, many foods have been studied to de­termine how they affect acne in relation to your body metabolism. Some studies have seemed to show that starchy foods, such as potatoes and bread, have an un­favorable influence on acne. In the process of digestion starches are changed into sugar by the body. This sugar, like other foods after they have been broken down in the body, eventually ends up in the blood stream. It is trans­ported by the blood to every organ of the body as nour­ishment and fuel for the tissues. The skin gets its share of sugar in this manner. When the skin receives larger amounts than it can use, it has been claimed that the excess sugar interferes with the health of the skin. Con­sequently, starchy foods and sweets are considered by some to be one factor in at least the aggravation of acne lesions.

From this point of view, it would be understandable why “sweets,” which of course are mainly straight sugar, seem to aggravate some cases of acne. Such foods as pastries, syrups and jellies contain large amounts of sugar. Candies are almost pure sugar. The sugar from these foods has the same effect on the skin as the starchy foods. Perhaps you have observed that your eruption is worse after eating lots of sweets and starches.

Another group of foods which have been suspected of playing a part in causing acne are the fatty foods. Just why they seem to make some acne eruptions worse is not clearly understood. Some scientists who have studied this problem feel that when large amounts of fatty foods are eaten, the secretion of the oil glands is increased or slightly changed in nature. It has been observed by a few dermatologists that acne flares up in some patients when they eat large helpings of foods such as cream, butter, mayonnaise and fatty cuts of meat. Cooking food in large amounts of oil and grease will do the same thing. This is particularly true of fried foods such as fried po­tatoes and pork chops.

The unfavorable effect that starches and fats have on some patients with acne is primarily a matter of medical observation. It has by no means been proven beyond all doubt in the laboratory. However, sometimes physicians are slow to find the exact explanation for conditions which are common knowledge.